Raikkonen had no chance to pass Hamilton

Kimi Raikkonen could have won the Hungarian Grand Prix to register his first victory since his return to Formula 1, but only if the race would have continued for another mammoth 20 laps.

After running in fifth and sixth positions in the first half, the Finn managed to pip teammate Romain Grosjean for second place after his final pit stop and successfully began hunting down leader Lewis Hamilton.

Although the Lotus caught up with the McLaren’s gap of over four seconds in a few laps, there was no opportunity available for the lead to change hands on the tight and twisty Hungaroring circuit, which holds the notoriety for the lack of overtaking.

“It was not so bad to follow through the last corner but you’re, I don’t know, one second later on the power every time so they just pull too far away and the straight is not long enough and the others are too fast,” Raikkonen pointed out.

“So it didn’t really give you any chance. My only chance was that they (McLaren) would run out of the tyres and then you will have a chance – but that never happened, so we probably should have had 20 more laps – and then it would have happened,” he remarked despite having the advantage of the DRS.

“We managed to catch Lewis but it was impossible to pass,” he conceded.

In the first stint, Raikkonen had trouble with his KERS as he could only use 50 percent of the device and consequently lost position to the Ferrari of Fernando Alonso.

"So the first few laps were not really good because we were trying to get the KERS working," he said adding that the issue was resolved later in the race.